Page 48 of Seven Nights

“Come on, fucker,” I growl at the shredder. “Just chew up a couple more pages, you son of a bitch.”

It accepts the three sheets I shove at it. With nothing else left to do while I shred, I check my backpack for the tenth time. My wallet, keys I won’t need anymore, my passport, a checkbook for a bank account with damn near nothing in it, my birth certificate.

I want to set it all on fire—everything in the backpack, the damn dress in its trash bag, the clothes in my suitcases. I want everything burning except this final object I am packing. But saving it would hardly matter. It won’t be mine after tomorrow.

Fuck you, Griffin Montgomery!

The Uber driver knocks at the door. Of course the asshole has to show up on time. He can’t be a little late like I need him to be.

Forcing a smile to my face, I call out.

“Coming!”

Before I move a single step away from the shredder, I feed another three sheets in.

I throw the locks on the door, open it.

It’s not the driver.

Griffin Montgomery stares at me, his expression impassive.

I move to close the door. His hand shoots out. The fingers wrap around the edge of the frame. I can still slam the door shut, but not without injuring him.

“Sent your driver away,” Montgomery monotones as he holds out his phone. “In case you want to call another one—or the cops.”

“You know I won’t call the cops,” I rumble. I can only guess how much Montgomery has learned about me, but he has my shoe and clothing sizes perfect, so I figure he knows a lot.

“And you won’t call another driver,” he says. “Not while I’m here, at least. And I’m here until we finish talking.”

“We are finished,” I tell him.

My gaze lands on the trash bag with the dress. I scoop it up and shove it at him.

“For your next pet,” I snap.

He lets the bag fall to the floor. He’s not forcing his way in, but he keeps his hand wrapped around the doorframe.

His gaze, however, goes everywhere, landing, at last, on my two suitcases.

“Not like you to run from a challenge, Kate.”

Turning away, I walk toward the living room, my head shaking with anger. “You’re not a challenge, Montgomery. You’re a bad memory.”

The front door closes. It takes the span of a heartbeat before I hear his step in the entry room.

Fine, I think. We’ll air this shit out, then I can take a little more time leaving Chicago. I still have to show up for the appointment tomorrow, but, if I’m not putting out money for a motel tonight, I have more options to reach the auction house in Aurora by eleven.

Parking my ass on the couch, I feed more blank sheets of printing paper into the shredder. Montgomery’s gaze skips from the machine to the coffee table with its box and the small lamp next to it.

A genuine Tiffany Studios piece, the lamp is from the eighteen-nineties. A bronze mermaid holds a nautilus shell aloft, the curving shell done in a blue-green leaded glass. I expect to get twenty thousand for it tomorrow.

It’s worth at least thirty.

Finding the century-old lamp in the rented hovel of an unemployed charity worker, Montgomery furrows his brow for an instant then nails me with his cold blue gaze.

“Your mother’s, I’d wager.”

My mouth contorts. I spit out hot air and wait for the shredder to quit grinding. I dump the contents of the collection bin into the box, put the lamp inside and estimate how many more sheets I need to shred.

---